Thursday, 18 February 2010

Piers Akerman is Being Victimized

In response to accusations he had misquoted John Houghton, Piers Akerman did the right thing and made a call to International Rescue. It worked:

"Unfortunately for The Independent, Crikey and the ABC, my call to international scientists has borne fruit.

Yesterday I was forwarded an article published in The Sunday Telegraph (UK) on September 10, 1995, in which Houghton told writer Frances Welch: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”"

This is indeed unfortunate for the Independent. It's tragic in fact. Here we have a different quote with different meaning to the one Houghton never made. But if we really want to - if we close our eyes and really wish - we can imagine that perhaps the misquote was just a paraphrase of this quote. A slight paraphrase in fact.

"How that remark came to be slightly paraphrased in the quotation sent to me we shall probably never know. It’s possible that someone, somewhere in cyberspace tidied up Houghton’s original remark before including it in the material which was sent to me. That sort of thing occurs in the blogosphere."

Akerman gives the blogosphere the credit it deserves, but strangely he claims we will never know how the quotation was paraphrased. If he consulted a Blog Scientist such as myself he could have found out.

The Blog Science technique of "tidying up" quotes - an example

Take what John Houghton actually said in 1995:"If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident."

This is quite boring. He's claiming humans won't act until it's too late. We could indeed paraphrase him as saying such. But that's not blog science. That's just telling people what John Houghton said, which would be alarmist. No we need to tidy up his words before we can discredit him and the science. Let me tidy up his words a bit so that it sounds like Houghton is advocating lying:

"Unless we announce disasters no one will listen"

There we go. Now it's blog post material.

True to form, The Independent ran Connor’s story which said I had not responded to his queries and, just as reliably, two left-leaning Australian organisations eagerly followed, convinced that they could discredit first me and, more generally, the convincing argument against global warming theorists.

So Conner misquoted Akerman. Typical! Misquoting people is a grave journalistic malpractice. But in Conner's defense perhaps he had simply tidied up Ackerman's words and was just slightly paraphrasing Ackerman.

Even worse we find out that other media outlets eagerly parroted the Independent's story! And it was all done to discredit an individual and discredit scientific arguments! I am glad us skeptics never stoop to such low practices.

Connor was playing ambush journalism and Houghton had never and still has not contacted me.

Ambush journalism? How typical! Fortunately Ackerman knows Ambush Journalism when he see's it. Skeptics would never resort to such a thing.

Houghton hasn't contacted Akerman which technically means he wasn't misquoted and Akerman is off the hook. I mean if you were egregiously misquoted and smeared by a journalist, wouldn't you be just dying to have a phone conversation with them? In journalism if you can misquote someone without them finding out, that's fine.

The ABC’s MediaWatch was next with a piece in which The Independent’s claim it had received no response from me was repeated.

That was patently false but then The Independent was not interested in accuracy. It was interested in discrediting me

Indeed and accuracy is of course very important. Journalists shouldn't be allowed to get away with patently false claims. Akerman is on the ball here.

his agenda was clearly to discredit the messenger (me) and, through that, strike a blow for the warmists, those who have been distorting and withholding data, manipulating scientific evidence and falsifying reports.

Discrediting messengers is bad, yet that is just the kind of behavior that mad "scientist" James Hansen would resort to.

The little Crikey website had a defamatory reference to The Independent and me, clearly unsupported by any research.

Defamatory statements? Statements unsupported by any research? Who would ever print such things? Certainly not Ackerman. Only those bastard warmist rags.

As it happens however, Houghton has made numerous remarks about catastrophic events that would flow from global warming, all of them now found to be baseless, and there is every likelihood that he wishes he never made them. When I read the material on Houghton sent to me, I believed it because it was entirely at one with the quote he gave The Guardian when he equated global warming with WMD in a piece it published on July 28, 2003.

We know what Houghton thinks so we should be allowed to put words in his mouth.

If The Independent, Crikey and the ABC had done some research they would have found the remark ascribed to Houghton which I was given was so little different to what was published 11 years earlier as to make their claims totally misplaced and devoid of anything but malice.

Ackerman is right. Journalists really should research quotes before publishing them.

As Professor Akerman correctly points out: Houghton wrote the first three ICCCP reports. The statement "Unless we announce disasters no one will listen" is just a tidied up version of those! Stuff and nonsense!

Will those bed-wetting warmist bastards never end their ad hominem campaign? They don't have any scientific arguments!

It's quite shocking how such errors get copied from one newspaper to another. Apparently journalists never check their facts. And in the meantime nobody is talking about the real story here, which is the thousands of errors that have been found in the IPCCC reports.

On a personal note, I'm quite impressed that Prof. Akerman was already involved in the blogosphere in 1995... We didn't even have internet at that time! He is truly a luminary well ahead of his time.

Paraphrased journalism is every bit as respectable and essential as blog science, and I salute your willingness to "share the spotlight" so-to-speak in illuminating this very valuable addition to science reporting.

Science and public policy are sufficiently complicated not to impose additional requirements, such as eliminating the use of quotes with paraphrases.

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In an unrelated matter, I have completely disproven the Theory of Altitudegenic Gravitational Waning, or AGW, by means of running the Half-Pippet by the means of Professor Shaun White, who was seen frequently to go UP when the mere "Theory of Gravity" would insist he go down. More at http://rewinn.blogspot.com/2010/02/theory-of-gravity-disproved-by-science.html

It is extraordinary how warmists are twisting Prof. Akerman's words to try to discredit him!

To use an analogy, imagine if Sir John Houghton saw a car accident at an intersection where a fatality was caused by the driver swerving to avoid a goat.

Sir John says "the intersection needs fencing to prevent the intrusion of goats". If Prof. Akerman then later quotes Sir John as saying "we need to prevent fatalities by removing goats", where is the distortion in that? It is clear that Prof. Akerman is simply reporting the true meaning of what Sir John has previously said. For the warmist islamo-facists to claim otherwise just shows how they are clutching at straw arguments.

So the facts and the truth are only important if they support your opinion.Monckton, in his presentations has stated that this quote is in Houghton's book.He categorically tells his audience that it is here in black & white.Wrong! BSHe obviously didn't read the book.One wonders who gave whom the poison pen.

Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, Curer of HIV, MS and and the Common Cold, victor of the Falklands War and Vanquisher of Al Gore wrote that in blue and red and white, and not in black and white. YOU LIED! WILL THE SMEARING AND AD HOMINEMS AND DISTORTIONS NEVER END???!!!!

After surfing around a bit on the web I simply had to stop and take a walk outside to cool off and regain my senses.

The pile of vile ad hominem straw man smears that Piers Akerman has been subjected to is once more proof of the true nature of those commie warmists. And they do that because he is using his own facts! Think about it, before you know it, he will be trashed for eating his own apple pie! Or repairing his own car.

But we see easily through this plot. They want to control our lives! Everything, including facts, will only be allowed if it comes from a factory run by the eco nazist hordes. We must resist!!

Those left elistists with university degrees think they have the monopoly on facts. Well we can make up facts that are just as good as theirs. Eminent scientist Piers Akerman has proven that once more.

Good to see that we have such honest, trustworthy, hardworking and god-fearing men as Professor Inhofe in our Senate who are not afraid to do something about one of the greatest crimes and injustices of our time. Obviously we can't leave it to that muslin occupying the White House, the illegal (because no birth certificate) president B. Hussain Obama. All he is talking about is the economic crisis, health care, and peace in the Middle East.

I do not quite share the excitement of The Baron over the esteemed Professor Inhofe's desire to prosecute. Don't get me wrong, I will be glad when those witches are hunted down and stopped from indoctrinating our children with their lies. But the court of public opinion (at least of the people that matter) has pronounced them guilty already, so it is simply time for sentencing.

Giving these cheats any sort of trial could possibly benefit them. We already know these fraudsters will stoop to any low. So I can easily imagine them using some trick to hide the fraud, like citing all the tons of unaudited research that supposedly shows global warming is real. They might get some people to believe them in throwing all of their nonsense out there without the filter of Blog Science to tell the public what really matters.

You certainly have a point, gmo. It's like the trail of Saddam: one certainly wouldn't have liked to let him spread a lot of lies about "support from the US during the Iran war" and so on before he was hanged. Do it fast and fair is my motto. Or at least fast.

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

What a hypocrite! Al-Gore already knows that there is no AGW threat. After all, he was the one who made it up in the first place!

And what is this nonsense about "attacks on the science of global warming"? Well we bloody well have to attack it and destroy it to save it from the communists, don't we?

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Giving these cheats any sort of trial could possibly benefit them. We already know these fraudsters will stoop have a phone conversation with them? In journalism if you can misquote someone without them finding out, that's fine.

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Good to see that we have such honest, trustworthy, hardworking and god-fearing men as Professor Inhofe in our Senate who are not afraid to do something about one of the greatest crimes and injustices of our time. Obviously we can't leave it to that muslin occupying the White House, the illegal (because no birth certificate) president B. Hussain Obama. All he is talking about is the economic crisis, health care, and peace in the Middle East.

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As Mentor Akerman Buy rs goldappropriately points out: Houghton published the first a few ICCCP stories. The particular assertion "Unless many of us declare mishaps no one may listen" is simply tidied way up Cheap wow goldedition of these! Things along with absurdity!

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I am certainly not afraid to be called a climate denier, in fact I embrace the term denier as medal of honor, once bestowed upon Galileo and lately upon me. That is why this blog is called Denial Depot - serving up all your denial needs.

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